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Missionary Episodes 


Issued as Occasion may Require by the 


American Baptist Foreign Mission Society 
Ford Building Boston, Massachusetts 


| The 
Black Demon 


By CHARLES R. MANLEY, M.D. 


HE tom-toms beat all night and 
this morning the streets are fairly 
. covered with chicken feathers. For 
black smallpox has taken the city and 
must be driven out. The priests have 
told the people to kill chickens and strew 
their feathers in the streets so they will 
catch the eye of Polerimah, the plague 
demon, and distract her attention. The 
tom-toms throbbing in the air will either 
frighten her or please her so much that 
she will forget to jump down the throats 
of any careless mortals whom she might 
find with mouths opened in speaking, or 
with lips parted, or sleeping with un- 
covered faces. Yes! the goddess Poleri- 
mah is angry with the people. 


[1] 


Yesterday afternoon they made a big 
tamasha, or feast, in her honor. A few 
of us foreigners heard that it was to take 
place and went down to the bazar to see _ 
what we could see. 

In the very heart of the bazar, our 
native servants told us, we should find 
Polerimah in all her glory. We wedged © 
our way through the masses of men and 
women who filled the place and found 
ourselves at last before the little hut of 
green reeds that had been erected over 
the goddess. I must confess I was sur- 
prised and disappointed at what I saw 
when I peepedin. After all the fuss they 
had made and the huge pile of rice they 
had heaped up as an offering, I ex- 
pected to see at least a life-sized lady 
demon. But instead I saw only a squat 
little figure, no more than a foot tall, 
made of black mud and covered with 
tinsel. -She was soaked with lemon- 
colored water which dripped off her 
shoulders into a widely spreading puddle 
_ round her feet. 

“Why so much wetness?” I asked with 

an amused smile. 

“They must keep her cool, ”” answered 
our guide with great dignity. ‘If, she 
gets warm she gets mad. So they have 
built this temple of reeds to protect her 
from the sun, and every few minutes the 
priests pour saffron tinted water over her. 
Whatever Super she must be kept 
-cool.”’ 


{2] 


It seems that if she gets hot she gets hot 
all through, and no amount of sacrifice 
e poojakh worship will. offset the 
effect. 


In front of the “‘wickie-up’’ was a 
constantly increasing pile of cooked rice © 
awaiting its sprinkling of life-blood to 
make it a food fit to satisfy the ravenous 
and blood-thirsty appetite of the goddess. 
Just beyond the rice-pile we could see a 
priest sitting on the ground bending over 
a smudge pot of burning incense. At that 
moment he turned to look at us and the 
terrible shape of his countenance made us 
cringe. His eyes were blood red and 
swollen and his sensuous mouth hung 
open. He was waiting for the demon to 
leap through the smoke and down his 
throat. 


“Then,’’ said our guide, ‘ ‘when he is 
demon-possessed, he will speak, and what- 
ever he says the people will do it.” 


But apparently our appearance on the 
scene had acted as a wet blanket on the 
heating up of his passion. Such an 
hysterical outburst, called demon-posses- 
sion, is almost always a fraud. The fit is 
merely assumed by self-hypnotism of the 
senses so that apparently inspired frenzy 
may conceal what is merely the cut and 
dried schemes of a shameless, heathen 
priesthood. Under our gaze, at any rate, 
the fellow became restive, and finally 
abandoned his incense pot and went 
slinking off through the crowd. I found 


[3] 


out afterwards that the man was an 
educated Brahman. Our timely advent 
saved the people at least the price that 
his ravings would have exacted from 
them. : 

We watched for a while the delegations 
of men and women coming from different 
parts of the town, bringing their offerings 
to Polerimah. With the blare of horns, 
the throb of tom-toms, the cries of the 
frantic wild-eyed dancers, band after band 
came in unvarying march around the 
little hut-temple, presenting their offer- 
ings and augmenting the rice pile. The 
priests meanwhile fought among them- 
selves for the various tid-bits and dainties 
that the more zealous women had brought 
with their rice. The scene began to take 
on the aspects of a dog-fight as the priests, 
getting more excited, snarled and snatched 
delectable morsels from the women and 
even from one another. Hearing a com- 
motion behind us we turned to see a band 
of priests coming up on the run, leading a 
buffalo bull. He was dyed with saffron, 
a wonderful canary yellow, and hung with 
garlands and with flowers. Behind him 
came a huge, savage black-faced fellow, 
holding aloft a great sickle-shaped knife 
in a hand that was white as snow. 


“The bull is another offering,’’ muttered 
my guide in my ear. ‘The big priest 
with the white hand must strike off his 
head with a single blow of the knife, and 
then the blood must be sprinkled all over 


[4] 


the sacred rice pile before the goddess will 
accept her feast.”’ 


_ Men around us began pushing, and sud- 

denly we found ourselves the center of a 
crush of swaying, wildly yelling men, 
every one determined upon witnessing the 
death of the bull. I was torn and shoved 
about, until in my struggle to stem the 
human tide and escape, I was thrust ankle 
deep into the sacred pile of rice. The 
priests, seeing what I had done, fairly 
raged. Though I could not understand 
their words, the harsh tones of their 
screams and their looks of malicious 
devilish hatred told me volumes. I 
ducked out of that crowd as fast as I 
could go. 


_ When I had put a safe distance between 

myself and the raging priests, I looked 
back to see that the mass of humans had 
closed in and were again whirling and 
pushing round. By this time the sun had 
slid pretty well down toward the horizon, 
and it was evident that something more 
was about to happen. A sudden yell was 
followed by a mad surging of the crowd 
- toward the temple which they tore to 
pieces in almost less time than it takes to 
tell it. In another instant everyone was 
waving a reed in the air. 


“Now what will they do?”’ we asked. 


“They are arranging to escort the god- 
dess out of the town,” said our guide. 
“They have done every thing they could 


[5] 


to appease her anger and make her 
happy; and now they are going to carry 
her out of town while she is still in a 
happy frame of mind, and throw her in 
the ocean.’ 


The procession wasformed. First came 
the priest carrying on his head a basket in 
which were the bull’s entrails, crowned by © 
his head, holding in his hideous, grinning . 
mouth the bone of his front fore-leg. 
Behind him came the goddess, carried on 
the head of another priest. And as the 
_ throng proceeded down the street, people 
by the wayside wrung the necks of 
chickens and threw the headless bloody 
bodies over the people’s heads toward the 
image. The horns blew, the tom-toms 
throbbed and the people yelled them- 
selves hoarse, waving their reeds in the 
air. What is the priest screaming? 
“Yell, brother, yell. Let confusion 

reign! Let not the terrible Polerimah 
suspect our fell designs, and fall upon us, 
before we are safely rid of her!” 


Following in the wake of the procession, 
I came up to a young mother who was 
hurrying along dragging a tiny child by 
the hand. The little girl was staggering, © 
her bare body was a mass of scars, her 
eyes heavy and dull with the intoxication 
of the dread disease. The child mother 
cried out to Polerimah to have mercy. 
As her wails mingled with the shrieks of 
thousands the procession passed down the 
crooked, dusty road and out of sight. 


—«6) 


Tonight, out there in the dark some- 
where, many young mothers are sitting in 
black despair, because in spite of all their 
sacrifices to the demon, the lives of their 
babies stricken with the fearful plague are 
surely ebbing away. 


It is our privilege to tell them, who 
understand love so well, that the love of 
the Great Physician, himself, is waiting 
_ to take the place of fear in their hearts 

and that his servants are waiting to min- 

ister to them. | 


CLovuGH MEmoriaL Hospital, 
Ongole, South India. 


(Reprinted from MrssIons.) 


The Ministry of Healing 
Seventy-two agencies for healing are main- 
tained on Baptist Foreign Mission fields. These 
consist of 26 hospitals and 46 dispensaries, and 
are in charge of 56 medical missionaries assisted 
by 152 American and native nurses. Nearly 
100,000 patients received medical and surgical 
treatment during the past year. You have the 
privilege of applying your gift to this work. 


[7] 


Previous Numbers in This Series 


His Father’s Place. 

The Day’s Work. » 

A Night in a Jungle Village. 

A Bean for Africa. . 
Negulhao: A Story of the Great War. 


St et 


For additional literature or information re- 
garding the work of the American Baptist 
Foreign Mission Society, write to any of the 
following: 


1. The District Secretary of your District. 


2. Department of Missionary Education, 23 East 
26th Street, New York City. 


3. Literature Department, Box 41, Boston, Mass. 


For information regarding gifts, write to 


J. Y. AITCHISON, Home Secretary, 
Box 41, Boston, Mass. 


126-18M-8-11-1918. 


